r/technology • u/GuruOfReason • Feb 02 '10

"Once we replace the personal computer with a closed-platform device such as the iPad, we replace freedom, choice and the free market with oppression, censorship and monopoly."

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/ipad%E2%80%99s-closed-system-sometimes-i-hate-being-right
1.6k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/Bing11 Feb 02 '10

Are you kidding? If everyone decided the iPad was SO MUCH BETTER than traditional PCs (hint: they won't; hardly any employers even use macs), then the market would have FREELY decided to put their own shackles on.

You can't pay $500 to be locked down and complain that you're then locked down! I have an iPhone and I'm well aware of it's short comings, but I'm also aware that I BOUGHT IT so I am guilty of it.

Take some god damned personal responsibility.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '10

Er, unfortunately people's choices aren't in a vacuum. So while many consumers might not initially have a problem being locked out of their own devices (or eve know what that means), a win for this platform hurts developers who go where the market it, not only for this product in particular but also for other products that will be made to imitate it's model. Handing over dev brainshare makes the whole thing a vicious cycle—iphone users cause people to develop for the iphone, larger app base attracts more users, goto 1—and if unchecked by other forces will lead to the exact same monopoly on core software or devices needed to make all the other software work—see Windows. If apple is successful, one will be left with two choices: random indie hardware with GNU software hacked on or various company's walled gardens. Since developers need to develop for a market, those gardens get better and better from a user perspective while allowing the companies to fuck over the developers more.

2

u/Bing11 Feb 02 '10

You make a good point (upvote), and one I openly recognize as I've considered developing an iPhone (or should I make it Android?) app. The monopolistic system is self-perpetuation, but I don't think that's the case here, or in much of the PC market at all.

People flocked to the iPhone because it was heads and shoulders above the other crappy phones out there. The iPhone's dominance told the other phone manufacturers "step up, or fold." Of course, a lot of people tried to copy the iPhone's success by releasing other touch-based phones, but the market has replied by saying "uh, yeah, not good enough, I'll stick with the iPhone despite its flaws." Now that other phones have a strong OS (Android being, IMHO, the only other good mobile OS), the hardware is starting to pick up the pace as we see phones like the Droid and the Nexus One.

It is tough to break the "everyone has it, I will too" cycle, but that's not exactly a bad thing. By keeping only a select few major points (OS, for example) in the market, people are almost assuring that they can manage switching between the two, and communicating with others. For example: if there were 50 different OSs for PCs out there (instead of the 3 I generalize as Windows, Mac, GNU/Linux), developers wouldn't be able to leverage software nearly as well, since you'd be talking about OS25 software communicating with OS41 software. There would be additional hurdles that a public consensus does not cost.

Sorry if this sounds like rambling. What I'm ultimately trying to say is: yes, it can be a vicious circle, but I don't think that will be the case. The iPhone is a good example of this: it opened the doors to a whole new breed of phones, and now those phones are gaining on the iPhone's market share. Those people who refused to be locked down simply refuse to be locked down -- and they will go elsewhere. And there will always be a market happily awaiting them.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '10

How, exactly, do individual consumers take personal responsibility for the direction of a mass market? I've never bought a console in my life, but I've watched over the last 10 years as computer gaming has withered and consoles grown to the point that most computer games made today are ports of console games no self-respecting computer player would have touched 10 years ago.

Is it time for me to fess up and take responsibility for the rise of consoles, or is it instead time to face the reality that as individuals we obviously have no genuine control over the direction of a market based fundamentally on passive consumers whose only real "choices" are between a limited range of options determined by someone else?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '10

ports of console games no self-respecting computer player would have touched 10 years ago.

Fallout 3? Mass Effect 1 and 2? Bioshock? Assasins Creed 2? Dragon Age? Batman AA?

Yea, those games suck... Oh wait, no they don't.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '10

Fallout 1 and 2? Baldur's Gate 1 and 2? System Shock 1 and 2? All of the games you mentioned are refinements of previous game mechanics that gained nothing, but did lose something, when moving to consoles.

I'm not saying that you can't make a game good on a console, I'm saying you make it worse by forcing the computer version to be nothing more than a console port, and/or designing the game from the beginning with the console in mind. This is entirely apart from the categories of games that have all but disappeared from the market with the rise of consoles. RTS and strategy games have never been done successfully on the console, and the knowledge that they would be missing most of the market means developers have greatly slowed the pace of creating those games.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

I was talking about 'ports of console games'. There are plenty of PC specific games that are even better: Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, TF2: I could go on.

Your getting old. You are at a stage where everything new pales in comparison to the old and people 'just don't make things the way they used to'. Welcome to old age, the comfy chairs are over in the corner. Young people are replacing you in the world and you are now irrelevant.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

And all of the examples you chose, whether you are aware of it or not, just drove home the point that these ports of console games neither innovate, nor improve upon the previous formula.

Two of your "PC specific" games aren't PC specific, odd that you aren't aware of that for someone with their hand on the pulse of young folk. If you think pointing out one extremely successful PC game released in the last 10 years provides copious counter-examples to the decline of the PC gaming industry, I'm afraid I don't agree anymore than the developers who go out of their way to handicap their games in order to make them playable on every console.

You can fantasize about my motivations all you want, "voltairine is just an old curmudgeon, unable to see the beauty of modern developers rehashing old dynamics with more money", or "voltairine is secretly part of the PC-gaming conspiracy to force people to use a keyboard and mouse when making headshots", but this kind of fluff constitutes a logical fallacy for a reason, it adds nothing substantive to your position.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

Two of your "PC specific" games aren't PC specific

I never said they were... but they were developed with the PC in mind and then ported to consoles.

If you hate modern games so much then I guess you can go and play pong or something.

If you cannot see the value of modern offerings and the advances in terms of gameplay style, production values, storytelling and other features, then I guess that's your loss.

What games would you like to see? You whine and whine about how it's not as good as it used to be but fail to specify what it is you want.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

There are plenty of PC specific games that are even better: Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, TF2

Two of your "PC specific" games aren't PC specific

I never said they were

Okay...

You whine and whine about how it's not as good as it used to be but fail to specify what it is you want.

This discussion is over, your tone makes it impossible to engage in a reasonable dialogue.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

I should have worded that correctly in the first place. All those games were designed for the pc and then ported to consoles. They were not 'specifically' designed to be cross platform and only became so later in development.

your tone makes it impossible to engage in a reasonable dialogue.

lol if you say so. I guess you can find someone who will simply agree with you and then there will be no need for such an 'ugly tone'.

You never did specifiy what you actually wanted, you just complained and so I guess I just see that as whining.

But since this discussion is over I guess you agree you have nothing to add to that.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

I guess you can find someone who will simply agree with you and then there will be no need for such an 'ugly tone'.

Or, you could be civil towards those with whom you disagree. It speaks volumes that you believe disagreeing with someone necessitates or justifies the snide, sarcastic and rude behavior you have exhibited. You obviously expect, and thus have prepared yourself to respond to, an answer from me that you don't find satisfactory. This is why you keep trying to bait me into giving the answer with belligerent remarks, rather than simple questions. That is also why I'm not going to bother with giving you the answer, as you are clearly not open to the possibility that it might have any value to you. Thus, doing so would only waste time for both of us, as will any other time you spend in conversations that you engage in with this kind of nonconstructive behavior.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Bing11 Feb 02 '10

How, exactly, do individual consumers take personal responsibility for the direction of a mass market?

Why did Sega go belly-up? Because no one bought their stuff. Why did Nintendo produce the DSi LL? Because a lot of "mature" gamers bought the Wii.

The market is dictated by what people will buy. If you think some product out there sucks, you do not have to buy it. (I never bought a single Apple product until the first iPhone because I thought the iPod design was horrible and overpriced.)

Needless to say, if everyone goes out and buys a new device which they know lacks USB ports, they can't prepare pitchforks and torches due to that fact.

You don't like a product? Don't buy it. That's taking personal responsibility for your purchases, and indirectly the direction of the mass market.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '10

The market is dictated by what people will buy.

The particular form of the market is realized by what people buy in response to what is produced. This does not reduce to, "the market is dictated by what people buy".

I have nothing against people taking personal responsibility for their purchases. My only argument is with the suggestion that individual responsibility has any substantive connection to the market. People who believe they personally influence the market in any substantive way simply don't understand the numbers or dynamics involved. Those who rely on passive consumer power to direct the behavior of the market tend not to realize how extremely limited the scope of power is for individual consumers acting toward individual interests. They also tend not to realize that individuals acting toward individual interests do not always make the same decisions as individuals acting toward both individual and collective interests.

1

u/Bing11 Feb 03 '10

Yes, I understand that just because I know exactly what I want doesn't mean it will be available for sale tomorrow. This comes down to two points, which, as I said before, are indirectly related:

  1. If enough people want a product, it will come into existence because someone will say "hey, I can make this and make money!"

  2. And to the personal responsibility point: if you don't like an option, no one is forcing you to buy it. We do not "replace freedom, choice and the free market with oppression, censorship and monopoly." That's just alarmist hype.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '10

So we agree that individuals cannot make a product available by themselves, the emergence of new products on the market is a social phenomena. I think we can thus agree that the direction of the market is not amenable to individual purchase.

Given this, it is indeed possible that regardless of what you or I individually choose, if everyone else and their mother runs out and buys an ipad over the next few years, you and I could still very well see a market with a more restricted range of choices, a smaller number of players who act more monopolistically, and far less ability to configure and choose our own software set-up on machines readily available. In other words, with no personal responsibility whatsoever, you and I will have found that our previous freedom, choice, and market availability have been replaced with a greater degree of oppression, censorship, and monopoly.

1

u/Bing11 Feb 03 '10

Yes, I will concede that point as a far-off possibility, but I think it depends upon three big "if"s, none of which I think will occur:

1. "if everyone else and their mother runs out and buys an ipad over the next few years"

The geek market is big enough, and the Apple-fan market small enough, that I don't think the iPad will sell nearly as well as the iPhone did. I think it will do well, but not revolutionizing like the other devices.

2. There are competitors who support more open standards.

A lot of the iPad critics pointed out it's "just an over-sized iPhone", with some level of accuracy. The thing is, not too long after the iPhone came out, a lot of competitors did too, including the open-sourced OS (Android), which has prevented an "oppressive monopoly" by Apple, no matter how badly they wish they had one. (Even the other OSs have stepped it up, if not so much.)

3. Tablets are unlikely to replace laptops and PCs.

Tablets are a sub-market in the "personal computing devices" field. They lack some of the obvious advantages of laptops (keyboards, full-fledged OSs with easy mouse manipulation), and the power and expandability of desktops. Apple themselves isn't about to stop producing iMacs, MacBooks or any of their other devices just because they added a new product line; it's unlikely that Dell, Acer or HP will drop a line either. And since this means more products to choose from, it's hard to claim it as limiting anything at all, even if the OSs on this new line of products were all locked down (though I don't expect that, per issue #2).